Beta 3B introduces the skeleton of tactical battles.
Here's the basic concept on how they're supposed to work:
Your Combat Speed is translated into action points. We do NOT use your Moves per turn stat (that's supposed to represent endurance and it's not subject to change).
The current system is, however, far too basic of course. In this thread, we will discuss which aspects of MOM, HOMM, AOW, as well as new concepts you guys would like to see.
Below is the system we intend to implement and we look forward to your thoughts on this:
These 6 things are what we consider the "basic" for day 0.
Obviously, right now, none of these 6 things are in. I am hoping to get a Beta 3C up on Monday that has them though.
On top of these 6 items there is what we consider "required" for v 1.1 (60 days or so after release):
In the long-term, we plan to keep evolving tactical battles based on feedback. It's not something we're going to push out there on day 0 and call it a day. But I also think it would be naive to think that by day 0 or day 120 that tactical battles will be the end all be all because there is just so much one can do with this area and it's not something that should ever be considered "finished".
The core of the reason we're wanting NullAshton's numbers (which essentially separate move and attack) is to fix the core issue that having high moves shouldn't have an effect on number of attacks, which should just depend on Combat Speed only. Most of the issues you describe are just current bad balance where you can't get units with more than 15-20 hp (if that), and are using 60+ damage weapons, turning everything into a glass cannon unit.
These issues would be easily solved by separating the current move/attack system into separate movement and attack stats. Furthermore, Troops should start out further apart (out of range of bow fire) and each ranged units attack radius should be highlighted (on mouseover).Last, but definitely not least: health needs to be a cumulative derived stat of constitution:Level: Constitution 10, Health 10Level: Constitution 10, Health 20 - I added my 2 new points into speed, so my health only increases by my initial constitution.Level: Constitution 12, Health 32 - I added my 2 new points into constitution, so my health increased by my new constitution.
Yep, it should be separated, but we've mentioned this many times already [I don't understand the devs in this case to be honest...they should've separated the movement&attack system from the beginning of the development of the tact. combat system..]..as for your other idea: I absolutely agree...even the "smallest" tactical map must be bigger & the size of the maps should "grow" dynamically based on the number of units/groups involved in the battle.
As of 3C the Tactical battles are sour. Any Attack and your unit is frozen in place despite points remaining. bah!
3B was actually not bad. Point were used up for both moves and attacks but apparently Kiting of the AI was the issue. bah!
If every action took up AP's (a combo of movement + CS/5 points) then we could do something like
Move(2x2)/Attack(1)/Quaff(1) and move back(risking a counterattack) one tile(2) with just 8 total points.
Using Potions and talisman should be in already...
Heh ... it might be Irritating for you John, but its necessary with the current system.
Honestly though, Attack Speed and Run Speed should be separate (and have nothing to do with Overland movement)
I think the current system of a single tactical action resource (combat speed/action points) is workable, it just needs tweaked by introducing variable costs and percent modifiers to those costs based on the previously existing stats. This is a restatement of the ideas I presented in post #84, with emphasis on tweaking the current system and how those tweaks effect the problems presented.
Tweaks to current system:
All units with the ability to move (so anything besides a watch tower/stationary golem) should have a minimum combat speed of 2, since that's the base cost of movement into a regular square. Units with fewer than the exact AP necessary to complete an action can't take that action.
Weapons have different AP costs associated with them. This provides interesting choices of weapon damage versus the number of times you can swing it in combat versus equipping every character with a single best weapon. It allows you to make ranged weapons slower to balance them instead of giving them less damage.
Spells need to have different AP costs associated with them. This provides a badly-needed way to differentiate between the spells of different schools. Right now, Throw Boulder, Icebolt, Firebolt and Lightning Strike are all essentially the same spell. If they have different AP costs, you can have a low-level earth spell that takes longer to cast, but does more damage, a fire spell that casts quickly for high damage but higher mana, etc.
The AP cost of an action should be modified by the relevant stat. So, magic AP cost is modified by intelligence, blunt weapon and ranged weapon AP cost is modified by strength, edged weapon AP cost is modified by dexterity, and movement cost is modifier by movement speed (not combat speed).
AP costs for everything should be modified by morale, essence, and armor type. Armor impacting all AP costs, like different weapon AP costs, gives the player interesting choices between heavily armored, but slow, units versus lightly armored faster units, rather than everyone just rushing to the highest armor possible on all units. It also makes magical armor that is lighter, rather than stronger, worthwhile, and creates an advantage of weightless defensive spells like mage armor.
Lose the restriction on moving, then attacking, because it's an artificial restriction that won't be needed with the above balance suggestions. Hit and fade attacks should be an option.
Problems these tweaks address:
1. The Sauron/Calvary Problem: These changes allow you to create both Sauron and cavalry within the current system. Sauron has a high combat speed with many action points to spend on either movement or attacking, so he can wipe out multiple ordinary units in a single turn. In addition, Sauron has essence, which decreases the cost to him of moving or attacking, no matter what square type he's moving through or what weapon he's using.
The calvary, on the other had, has a normal number of action points and a normal combat speed, so they can only do as many attacks as a non-mounted unit. Their mounts, though, increase their movement speed, which in turn decreases the cost of movement for them, so they can move farther in their turn.
For example:
Sauron has a combat speed of 4.0. Because of his essence advantage, attacks with his FrogBlade cost 0.5 AP and movement costs him 1.5 AP. So, he can move 2 squares without attacking (unlike the current system, I propose you have to be able to pay the whole cost), or attack 8 times, or some combination of the above.
Cavalry has a combat speed of 2.0. They attack with their long-swords for a cost of 1.0 AP per attack, but because of their fast movemeent speed, movement also only costs them 1.0 AP. So the cavalry can move 2 squares (just as far as Sauron), but can only attack twice if they don't move.
2. The non-caster sovereign Problem: Many have raised the issue that non-caster sovereigns just don't have a compelling reason to hold onto their essence. The proposed modifications change that. Say Sauron in the example above uses half his essence imbuing land, heroes, or just losing it to tricksy hobbitses in Texas Hold'em. The loss of half his essence modifier makes his AP costs go up, so now movement costs him 1.8 AP, the FrogBlade 0.6 AP. He can still move just as far, but can only attack 6 times per turn (a 25% loss in damage), so he feels the loss of his essence in combat.
3. The paucity of important decisions Problem: Right now there are not emogh real trade-offs in unit design other than cost. You always want to build the fastest, highest-damage, strongest-armor, longest-attack range unit you can afford. It is unlike GalCiv, where hull space forced you to make trade-offs between offense, defense and range in unit design. By giving weapons different AP costs and having armor modify those costs, the player can now make interesting choices about lightly-armored rangers, light cavalry versus heavily armored footmen and heavily armored knights. Armor currently subtracts a fixed number from combat speed, which serves a similar purpose, but matters less the faster a unit's combat speed is. The current way weapons add to combat speed gives you a strange situation which a mage might be able to cast more spells per turn because of what kind of sword he's holding (which, I suppose, if nothing else changes, creates an interesting opportunity to create mage weapons which do no damage but simply add to a mage's combat speed).
I've already mentioned that the spells for the various magic schools feel like reskinned copies, particularly at the lower levels. Adding AP cost to spells allows another way to differentiate between the magic schools. Earth magic should feel slow, cheap (mana cost) and powerful; Air fast, cheap and weak; Fire fast, expensive and powerful; water slow, moderate cost, moderate power.
Anyway, I hope these ideas are useful in some way, even if it's just furthering the conversation.
That's a very good point and question, Tridus. When I say "don't fall for it" I mean for the AI not to fall into the trap of being led like a dog on a leash always out of range until it's killed. The AI will need more options or to figure out "Hey, I can't catch this guy to hit him so I'm going to stand back and throw a rock at him instead".
Now of course there's going to be plenty of units that Won't have both a mêlée and ranged attack, so some of these battles with certain types against other certain types just simply aren't going to be fair. This comes down to balancing weapons and armors and things like that though.
What I'm talking about is more of a "Path Finding" issue crossed with a "Tactics Issue". The AI needs to "compute" that it can't catch it's target and needs a different tactic, even if that different tactic is to simply retreat or withdraw from battle (I had an AI opponent run from me last night in battle).
How do you withdraw from battle? Only the attacker can do i assume, and if so, do you escape to the cloudy area at the side of the map?
All of these posts have something in common. All of them come to the same conclusion that Many of us came too way back in Beta 1 when we were just Talking About Stats and Tactical Battles. Base issue, there needs to be More Variables, plain and simple. I think most of us saw this coming back when we were told that the Stat system was going to be....simplified....which almost all of us said was a Bad Idea. Hence the issues we're having now. Usually adding more variables and numbers to crunch can complicate things in a bad way, but in this instance honestly it complicates things in a Good Way. Either these two variations on speed need to be separated OR some other tweak needs to be found by balancing another factor to even this out, just don't ask me what that factor should be.
Change damage values on all ranged attack types? Well, if you do that you end up gimping casters and ranged units. Change armor values so mêlée characters can take more punishment and corner the caster before dying? Maybe, but that might end up gimping casters and ranged units as well.
The next question this brings to mind is Time. Does the Team really have time to go back and separate these values and what they do in the code for EVERY monster and unit in the game before launch? The only ones who can answer that are Frogboy and the Team and on top of that if they spend the remainder of their time separating the values then what will be left out (if anything) so they can have the time to do it? This could be a pretty significant change to be trying to pull off this late in the design phase but the only ones who know that for sure are the Team.
Those are some pretty good numbers, John. This would appear to be the least amount of work with the most benefit to show for it I think.
Your Whole Post is Excellent, Spitz, as is your idea in reply 84. As I pointed out above though, the Team may or may not run into time limitations here. Frogboy stated a while ago that at this point major engine changes won't be possible. Granted, tweaking values and variables is by no means what I would call a "major engine change", how-ever, when you add up the Sheer Amount of All the things that would need changing, well, that's a whole lot of stuff. Right now Time is the Enemy that the Team faces.
In my opinion I think it should be Very Important to Stardock to make sure that the game play is Fun and decently balanced AT LAUNCH and NOT with a patch 30 days After Launch just to balance out game-play. For many of us the editors and what we can do with them are the "Star of the Show" here, for a professional game reviewer though that's normally Not the case. When Elemental launches it's going to be judged on certain key points by the reviewer community. These points are going to be Graphics, Game-play, then followed by stability and any bugs the game may have. While I'm Positive all the Love that has gone into the editors will get at least a Nod in ANY review that's written about Elemental, sadly they won't be enough on their own to ensure that Elemental gets the praise and attention it deserves. If the game is inherently flawed at launch it will get flamed in reviews and that won't be good at all.
I'm Completely Confident the Team will have some idea that will solve all this and probably pretty easily too. It all comes down too how much time they have left and how much they pack into that time. They're definitely smart enough to come up with a solution and get it in game. It's just a matter of how much time they take to do it and having it down by launch day. Having Impulse will help them a great deal as well since they can keep working from the time they go gold to the time of actual launch, but, there's always going to be that small population of players that buys just the boxed version of the game and who don't have a reliable internet connection at home and for those people Elemental needs to be Fun and Balanced out of the box without any internet patches from Impulse to fix any game breaking flaws, because that is the version of the game that the reviewers will be looking at when they write their review. They won't be looking at Elemental after it's 0-day patch. In fact if the game has any major game breakers Without the patch being applied I'd say that could be Very Detrimental to Elemental's success in reviews.
I'm pretty sure you just have to walk into the cloudy area but I don't know for sure. I've never retreated myself, just seen the AI run from me.
Well - separating attack and movement is a great idea and I'm all for it, but combined movement/attack points isn't really the cause of the absurd number of attacks per round, it just exacerbates that problem. The more basic cause is that all attacks/spells are set to a cost of 1, the cost needs to be variable - 1 point per attack is fine for a dagger, sure, but a bow or spell should be more like 4. Separating movement and attack points would also be a great change that fixes other problems, and makes the all-attacks-cost-1 problem less absurd, but still doesn't remove the basic problem that powerful spells cast as quickly as a dagger can stab.
[Edit: Of course if movement and attack speed are separated, such that most combat speed increasing items give combat movement instead of attack speed, and only weapons themselves modify attack speed, that'll have the same effect where the weapon determines how quickly you can attack.. except for spells, which are a problem. Even then fast weapons would allow you to cast more spells, bad mechanic.]
Also: yeah, everything does too much damage and has too little health. This is a simple balance problem though, not an issue with the game mechanics, I'm sure that'll get adjusted quickly. I'm more worried about fast movement = fast attacks and all attacks of any type (sword, bow, spell, etc) having the same cost.
Indeed. That's why I brought up a few of these ideas:
Varying costs is a must when you're dealing with things that range from something as simple as being stabbed to something as potentially complex as casting a spell that wipes out a whole army.
Aha, you caught me - didn't read the entire thread. Still it all bears repeating, good points - especially 4 and 6, variable costs for everything!
Anyway, I should be clearer: cavalry-swing-their-swords-faster-than-infantry is a big problem, one that needs to be fixed more than anything, by somehow separating combat movement and attack speed stats. Just saying that we shouldn't forget to make daggers swing faster than spells are cast, variable costs is a separate (but related) problem.
LoL, that's nothing. You should see some of Wintersong's wall of texts. Mine is more like a "Fence of Text" compared to his "Mountains of Text". Shame on you for not reading the whole thread. You're supposed to commit each word of every post to Memory before even thinking about posting a reply....jees, some people's kids, I swear.
hehe J/K, man.
@ Winter where-ever he is:
I haven't tried 3C yet so my comments may not apply. I see some potential problems with the above though.
1) Movement = 2 points, attack = 1. Basically all fast units will be attacking like mad men. There needs to be some sort of system that allows for units that move fast but can't attack that fast. Cavalry are a great example, they are fast but don't attack fast. I see you do not plan on decoupling movement and attack so perhaps a better system would be 1 action point for movement and 2 for attack. Attacks should be something special and you can also think of each attack representing multiple blows. That would at least allow for a cavalry unit that can move multiple squares and not attack like a guy on speed. Also this system will greatly overpower archers as they will not need to move much. An archer with a good combat speed will be very nasty. Other options would be to only allow one attack per turn and leave multiple attacks to special abilities. Currently this is one of my major gripes with the game so far. It's very inflexible and we can't model real world behavior.
2) Please give us control over the placement of our troops, at least as an option. We will inevitably come up with strategies or abilities that don't fit your autoplacement. I really hate autoplacement, having someone (me) sit back and rearrange their troops for 2 turns every battle before advancing could potentially cost just as much time as letting us place our units. I'm guessing the autoplacement has to do with making battles fast so there is a counter argument. Plus there is terrain to consider. Great you just placed my archers behind a mountain so they can't fire... thanks now I'm going to lose this battle. You will never find a system that makes everyone happy with autoplacement. You can also have a system that allows for some sort of pre-placement. Either let us save the placement or base the placement on the order of the units in the stack (and of course allow us to reorder the troops in the stack).
heh, maybe flip it.
An attack takes 2 combat points, and movement costs 1 combat point.
Of course, having separate Run Speed and Attack speed is still preferred by far.
If you want someone killing that many guys you really should be doing it through special abilities or magic items. Having someone kill 8 guys with single attacks in one turn shouldn't happen unless the guy is super, super fast (a fast race, that's hasted with a dagger of speed maybe). Sauron or a dragon arent super fast (in terms of attack speed), they have attacks that hit multiple guys at once or have multiple forms of attack and kill almost instantly. You should really plan on limiting attacks to 1 per turn for average units, 2 for some more elite types of units and 3-4 for a handful of powerful figures (mainly monsters with multiple forms of attack). If you give Sauron 2 very powerful attacks per turn and give him a sword with the cleave ablity that hits the target for full damage and the 2 adacent squares for 1/2 damage then you have a killing machine without having him fly across the battle field. The dragon can have 3 or 4 attacks (mouth, 2 claws, tail) and have a special firebreath ability which will make him very powerful. Please whatever you do come up with a system that makes real world sense. The concept of action points is fine but the way it is being used needs some major work.
The best solution (in my opinion) is to have movement have it's own cost and have each attack have it's own cost. Having all weapons types and spells costing the same isn't the best solution. I know you want to keep things simple but you are making things restrictive with the current system. Even if you don't want to get too complicated for the base game the system still needs to be flexible enough to handle mods where people do want to get complicated. I think you stated you wanted a system that could be modded to handle all kinds of settings. So in a space game we might have ships with 2 lasers that fire fast plus a missile system that shoots slowly. In a modern setting we have armor that moves very fast but moves very slowly in the forests. Hopefully you can get a system that can handle scenarios like this as well as the more immediate scenarios of Sauron, cavalry and heavy infantry.
"Variable costs" and such really feel like just a more complicated solution then the one we had on page 1.
Actually, the one on page 1 does provide variable costs, since weapon stats tend to include combat speed (and armor has a penalty). If someone wants variable speeds per weapon type, they can just give piercing weapons a +1 combat speed bonus, and clubs -1, whatever they feel like.
You make a good point, Raven X. Here is a more limited version of the tweaks I suggested for the Day 0 version. I'd still like to see everything I suggested, plus some of the other great ideas we've seen here from people about zones of control, etc, because I think it's more interesting and scalable, but:
Leave the systems for weapons and armor modifying combat speed by a fixed number as-is. Give range weapons a small negative combat speed modifier.
Change the move-first, attack-second rule.
Require a unit to have the minimum number of required points to perform an action and make sure all units have a minimum combat speed of 2.
Allow stats (movement speed at an initial minimum), essence (to make it matter for non-caster sovereigns and imbued melee heroes) and morale to modify AP costs as I previously suggested (this will have the intended effect of rendering units with low combat speed and low morale motionless).
Give spells a variable AP cost. If time absolutely doesn't permit, alternatively, give all spells the same AP cost for the release version, but allow magic users to specialize in one or more elements, thus reducing the AP casting cost for spells of that class. Variable spell AP costs to differentiate magic schools would be a high-priority wish for an early patch.
Again, just my 2 cents.
How about a spell costing its level in APs to cast? I.E a level 4 spell takes 4 AP to cast. Any attacking/moving by the caster during the turns it takes to complete interrupts the spell. This way an opponent has 2 or 3 turns to try to interrupt a Sovereign casting a 9th lvl nuke spell. Also keeps someone from busting out 3 or 4 high level spells per turn.
If spell level= # of APs doesn't balance, you can always toss a modifier in there: (modifer * Spell Level) = # of APs...note that could also be a difficulty modifier as well, which would make more challenging levels harder to play, and easier levels easier to play.
well, the thing with that is that all anyone needs to use is their starting spells anyway. level1 ftw.
True, the original solution (action points/combat speed = cost to attack) is a variable cost system - i.e. you wouldn't be able to swing a claymore as many times as you can swing a dagger (assuming those weapons have an impact on your 'combat speed'), that's all that variable cost means.
The only problem is that it doesn't deal with spells; unfortunately a guy with a dagger would have more combat speed, and thus cast faster than a guy with a staff. Do we really want Gandalf trading in his staff for a dagger so he can get more spells off in battle? But this can be easily fixed in the action points/combat speed idea by giving spells a separate "cast speed" stat* not affected by your weapon's combat speed - how quickly you can swing your mundane weapon should be meaningless when you're throwing a fireball. So it would still be action points/combat speed = cost to attack, except when you cast a spell, then it's action points/cast speed = cost to cast.
Incidentally this lets you give spells different cast speeds, which opens up some interesting possibilities, but that's just a side bonus. The main idea is:
-Different weapons should have different 'costs' to attack (which are not affected by your movement speed) [Original idea]
-Your weapon's 'cost' to attack should not make you cast faster or slower; spells (and abilities?) should have their own separate 'costs' to cast. [What Raven X (I think) and I are trying to point out]
*Edit: If one is worried about there being too many stats to keep track of, keep in mind that this "cast speed" needn't necessarily be the kind of stat you see on items or as part of the unit details; it could be an innate part of the spell (like mana cost) not affected by the unit casting it or his items. Or you could let some items and unit stats give +cast speed bonuses if you like, either way - depends on how complicated you want it to be.
I agree with the Above System.
the current oversimplification of tactical battles reminds me distinctly of the oversimplification of battles in GC2. brad likes to think of his games as glorified board games in which all the numbers can be traced by the player almost as quickly as the computer comes up with them. this is a noble purpose, but it leads to some ridiculous situations. anyone could look at the GalCiv battles and notice that it didn't have any mechanics at all to demonstrate big ships being outmaneuvered by small fighters. or accuracy. or range. and it made for ridiculous situations and boring armies.
i fear this mistake is being made in elemental as well, and when players have a degree of control in proceedings they will feel even more frustrated. combat is far too complicated to be modelled by (effectively) 4 stats. look at the warhammer games, look at D&D, look at the ultra casual total war games. we need separate stats to separate the strength of attacks from the chance of hitting, toughness vs parrying ability (you can't parry an arrow), movement ability from number of attacks, because these are all things that vary in any reasonably imaginable scenario. these are all massively obvious. fortunately we have computers that are easily capable of managing all these variables. the real world, or even a fantastical facsimile thereof is a complicated place, but reasonably unabstracted mechanics do not make for a complicated game. GalCiv 2 was based on many simple mechanics but still ended up massively confusing to casual players (in my experience); all people who had no problems with more complicated but less abstracted systems like D&D.
i love brad and could never do what he does, but he can be stubborn on things like this (for good reason; release is only a month away), but he really needs to budge on this imho. movement speed and number of attacks really need to be split up imho at the least. in the long term, there needs to be even more change.
I'm inclined to agree.
Best regards,Steven.
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